The Careful Undressing of Love – Blog Tour : Deleted Scence

The girls of Devonairre Street have always been told they’re cursed. Any boy they love is certain to die too soon. But this is Brooklyn in 2008, and the curse is less a terror and more a lifestyle accessory—something funky and quaint that makes the girls from the shortest street in Brooklyn special. They wear their hair long and keys around their necks. People give them a second look and whisper “Devonairre” to their friends. But it’s not real. It won’t affect their futures.

Then Jack—their Jack, the one boy everyone loved—dies suddenly and violently. And now the curse seems not only real, but like the only thing that matters. All their bright futures have suddenly gone dark.

The Careful Undressing of Love is a disturbing and sensual story of the power of youth and the boundless mysteries of love set against the backdrop of Haydu’s brilliantly reimagined New York City.

Author’s Note:I started working on this idea in 2011 and this scene is from a 2012 draft that I later threw out entirely. There’s even a character mentioned in this scene who got cut a few years ago. I like this scene, because Charlotte and Lorna’s relationship has always been a complicated one, and I love that even in early drafts there was a tension between them.– – – – –

“You guys are the weirdest couple.” Charlotte’s got a picture of me and Owen in her hands now, and she’s turning it, like maybe she’ll learn more seeing us sideways or upside down than she can seeing us right side up.

“You and Cruz are weird too. He has a tattoo.”

“I could get a tattoo.” Charlotte could never get a tattoo and we both know it. I raise my eyebrows and wait for her to laugh, but she’s silent. Downstairs people are trickling in. I can pick out their voices and footsteps, the way you can only do when you’ve known someone forever.

“You have a photo of Cruz, huh?” she says, picking another photo up. It’s way underneath the pictures of everyone else: silly old ones of me and Char, recent Halloween dolled-up ones of me and Paris, my favorite picture of me and Delilah, running Delilah’s mom’s craft booth at the street fair in Park Slope that was easily the best day of the entire school year.

The photo of me and Cruz is nothing special. We aren’t looking at each other or touching each other or smiling, even. And it’s not a recent picture. Two years old maybe. We have matching red hoodies zipped up to our necks, and matching red noses from the whipping wind. We’d been on Coney Island together but not, the way we went places from time to time, and a tourist had offered to take our picture in exchange for us taking his.

It’s funny Charlotte’s pausing on something so random and unimportant and not my fault, but there it is. She holds the picture up to her nose, like she’s eighty and needs a better look at it, but there’s nothing to see. Blank expressions. Cruz’s pretty, light brown face next to my freckled pale one. My hair in my eyes, the squint that comes from trying to keep it out.

“You’re pretty here,” Charlotte says, which of course means I’m not really pretty in other contexts, just that one.

“Don’t even know when that’s from,” I say. It comes out too fast, and it’s strange that it comes out a lie, since there’s nothing to cover up. It’s strange enough for me to lie on purpose, let alone lying by accident.

“He’s effing beautiful, isn’t he?” she says. It doesn’t sound like Charlotte, to say effing. People who say effing are usually also people who use the real world. Charlotte doesn’t swear at all. And the question part of it should be rhetorical, but the way she spoke, it was a real question. Like she knew she was supposed to think so, but couldn’t quite remember.

“Lucky you,” I say, which isn’t an answer at all.

“You think I’m making a mistake, being with him?” she says. It’s been a while since Charlotte and I have talked like this. Maybe since before she and Cruz got together, and it makes me want to bake up some cookies and pop some popcorn and really snuggle in for the night, seventh-grade style.

“You think I’m making a mistake being with Owen?” I counter. If she’s bad, we’re all bad, right? Charlotte laughs her tiny laugh. I think it’s a cough for a second, and wait for her to answer. But no, it’s a laugh. She’s laughing at me because my question is ridiculous.

“I think we agree that if the curse were real they’d already be dead,” Charlotte says. We almost never say the words dead or died or death around here. We say gone and missing and vanished. We both inhale on the difference, on the jump from script. “If we both love them, and they’re both still here, and we’ve been with them sort of a while, then I guess it’s all a bunch of hooey. Right?”

I hadn’t been wanting to talk about the Curse at all.

“I’ve always said it’s hooey,” I say. It’s a Charlotte word. I would have said crap.

“I’m really glad you love Owen,” she says. And she looks glad. She looks relieved.

“You know, it sucks, that this is what falling in love looks like around here,” I say, gesturing to the filling room downstairs.

“What do we have to do to convince them it’s okay?” Charlotte says. She smiles an old smile and centers the photo of me and Owen on my little desk. Tilts her head and nods like she can see it, almost.

We roll our eyes at generations of believers and the way a whole neighborhood can hold onto something whether it’s true or not.

We roll our eyes so hard and so fast and with such big smiles it’s almost possible to forget that a roomful of widows is in my living room, and that something about that certainly isn’t right.

Author Bio:

Corey Ann Haydu is the critically acclaimed author of several novels for young readers novels, including OCD Love Story, which earned her a Publishers Weekly Flying Start. Her books have been Junior Library Guild, Indie Next, and BCCB Blue Ribbon selections. Corey lives in Brooklyn with her dog, her fiancé, and a wide selection of cheese.

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